Cravats... and a Red Sash

I do not wish to hold in my hand a pen, but a scalpel; not to write, but to cut and to draw blood.

For we have grown weary of writing, and the papers are filled with black ink. The role of words is finished, and the time for action has come.

In this article I want to touch on a matter few have troubled themselves about, though it is a vital matter that ought to have been the subject of all writers and thinkers.

I surprise the young with a question — can anyone answer it? It is a simple question:

Are we a people?

How can we be a people when no feast unites us, no joy, no gladness... even dress divides us... and stranger still, the idioms and expressions of conversation and courtesy prove that Lebanon is divided into different tribes and peoples...

Bonjour — good morning.
European dress and a cravat — beside baggy trousers and a red sash.
A brimmed hat beside a qub'a cap.
A pipe beside a water pipe.
The scents of Soir de Paris facing Indian oils...

And yet we are one nation: we were created from one soil, we have breathed one breeze, and we have lived in one heat and one humidity.

But after thousands of years we are still different peoples and tribes in a tower of Babel. This one in a red tarboush, that one in a black brimmed hat, a third wearing a skullcap, and a fourth an agal.

The psychologists say that outward dress is nothing but the manifestation of a man's mentality, his degree of culture, his feeling, and his manner of thinking. So no further proof is needed that every individual among us is a nation unto himself, with feelings of his own, and temperaments that vary as the outward appearance varies.

A curse upon those ages that passed over us without melting us in a single crucible and creating from us a living nation with high ideals...

Where are the high ideals that knit souls to one another and weave thoughts and aims into a fabric of a single color, representing the unity of the nation? The calamities poured upon us are nothing but the fruit of those divergent tendencies. Shall we take warning from them?... Here is Palestine, which the butchers have severed from the body of the nation...

Let every one of us know that there are two camps in the world: a Western camp and an Eastern camp.

The Western camp looks upon the East with scorn and contempt, and brands it with barbarism and savagery...

That is the result of the victory of European civilization over Eastern civilization: the East has become the laughingstock of the mighty European, who plays havoc with its destinies as he pleases, and has not acknowledged even its right to live.

What, then, is the road we must take to escape these straits?

We have a great proof of salvation.

There is the Turkish nation, which only yesterday stood on the brink of the abyss. It was Eastern in its bent, drowning amid the waves of fanaticism and ignorance; the civilized West bore it a grudge, and set about cutting a piece from its body every day and driving it out of the European continent — after they had once stood at the gates of Vienna, the capital of Austria. Then, after three centuries, the Turkish youth awoke and realized that there was a sweeping European public opinion that could not endure fanaticism and loathed ignorance, and that this was what had been fighting them in secret and in the open. So Mustafa Kemal arose, embodying the spirit of the rising youth; he opened for it the road of deliverance, crushed the spirit of fanaticism, and smashed the worn-out laws — laws by which the dead who had framed them ruled the living, while they themselves were moldering bones in their graves... And he broke the shackles that had fettered minds and thoughts.

He set men's brains free and opened before them the field of work and thought, and it became a living nation. The civilized West adopted it and set it, after that intellectual revolution, in the ranks of the advanced states; and today it showers it with affection and tenderness, and has flooded it with money, arms, fleets, and rewards, so that it might become a rich, living, strong nation.

Yesterday there were in Turkey an Armenian, a Greek, a Bulgarian, and a Turk; today there is only a Turk.

Because there is one law that makes no distinction between individuals.

Will this nation bring forth a Mustafa Kemal to take it by the hand to the summit of glory?

Thy mercy, O God! Hasten to us this hero, for the whole people awaits the coming of this savior.

For the enemy is standing at the gates, and we are still asleep.